среда, 11 ноября 2015 г.

Лосины Маршала Потемкина – Сны безработного провинциала (2012)

While just
a week ago ЛосиныМаршалаПотемкинаreleased their fourth album, we’ll take a look
on their second one now, as I believe this “band’s” story is more like a
story of evolution, so it’s necessary to get known with their discography in
chronological order.

A year
after their debut LP, Лосины.. released this one, showing deeper and more
serious approach. The title (“The Dreams of Unemployed Province Dweller) aimed
to alienate the songs from “the crowd” (big cities – province; society –
unemployed; and even reality – dreams), which was sort of escapist manifesto,
but only sort of, because in particular, it was heavily realistic, sometimes
even topical album.

Photo by Pavel Chainichkov

It was
still neofolk / folk with primitively sounding out-of-tune acoustic guitar,
harmonics, found objects… not much has changed, but generally the sound was a
bit “brighter” and closer to bard music, popular in Russia, but there’s a huge
distance between real “bards” and ЛосиныМаршалаПотемкина, while
saying “closer”, I mean that previously the distance was like between Earth and
Mars, and then it has shrank to the distance between Earth and the Moon :)

Some songs
were really inspired by the dreams I saw («Намелководье» — “In
the Shallow Waters”), some songs («Лишняяпеснялишнегочеловека», «ЯхочубытькотомФеликсом», «Лужа» — “A Superfluous Song from a
Superfluous Man”, “I Wanna Be Felix the Cat”, “The Pool”) were written in a
sick mood after being hit on the street by some criminal bastards trying to
steal my cell phone (a common situation in a remote Russian town), and appeared
earlier on our annual sampler “Superfluous Music”.

You might
know that “Superfluous Man” was a typical character of the Golden Age of
Russian literature (I suggest you to check out the true masterpiece of Russian
realism, “Diary of a Superfluous Man” by Ivan Turgenev), and it’s kinda
funny that this song was a true improvisation, I just took my guitar, pressed
“Record” and started to play, composing the lyrics on the go, there was only
one take, and the result was quite impressing.

When you don’t know where to start

Think about what could be the end

While the 1st
album was ~90% humorous, the 2nd was only about 50% humorous.
Amongst humorous songs «Медитация №9» (Meditation #9), «Ксива» (The Pass) and especially «Случайнастройке» (A Case on the Construction Site)
deserve mentioning. In this song, a “passer-by” Petya tries to save a boy who
was hit in the head by a brick while walking on the construction site… and it’s
also a common story, I mean – haven’t you ever wanted to take a walk on the
construction site? I guess every boy wanted.

“In the
Shallow Waters” is important for me as it shows the structure and even the
“tectonics” of a dream I experienced, its music is closer to industrial and
lyrics are one of my favorites, it also includes a brief quote from “The
Possessed” by Dostoevsky.

The line “I was born on Herzena Street” comes
from quite popular in the Russian web Soviet recordings of mentally ill people,
released in 1962, and this line was illustrating schizophasia aka “word salad”. Alexander Herzen, by the way, was
famous Russian 19-Century writer, publisher and journalist, I highly recommend
you his desperately unknown work “Dr. Krupa” (sorry, couldn't find a free-access English translation). Herzena St. is also peculiar as there are Herzena streets in various Russian towns.

Industrial
sounds can also be heard on «Сказкапровахтовика» (“A Fairytale about a Shift
Worker”), while closer to album’s end there are two short acoustic songs «Похмелье» and «Обидныйфакт» (“The
Hangover”, “An Offending Fact”), which are totally sombre.

“If there is any freedom in this world,

Then there’s not much freedom has left”

“Though different people are tortured by
different demons,

We’ll hang all the demons on one rope

And we’ll bury all the demons in one grave

And we’ll cry one tear for all the demons”

I believe
this album reflects my own and even people’s state of mind back in that time, I
dare to say so, I dare to tag it as “folk” music, as this is what Russian folk
music should be like. It’s half funny, half depressing, a very bipolar album
from a representative of “bipolar nation” as some YouTube user commented on
a video about our country. Who knows, maybe he was right, I refuse to judge and,
certainly, refuse to condemn anybody. I’m just a regular guy, you know.